The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is among the leaders in the recovery of the history, languages, and cultures of the ancient Near East. In the halcyon days of the 1930s, when universities and museums conducted expeditions on a scale now unheard of, Oriental Institute teams worked in nearly every country of the Near East. An integral part of each excavation was the expedition photographer, who was entrusted with capturing not only the routine of each day’s work but also the moments of discovery and exploration. These images recount some of these memorable moments, as the Oriental Institute sifted the sands of time.

Links are provided below to a sampling of images from the photographic archives of the Oriental Institute. The complete archive contains over 100,000 negatives documenting the Institute’s activities from 1892 to the present. These images record now-vanished temples and tombs, famed archaeologists standing proudly near their greatest finds and scenes of life now effaced by modern times.

Links are also provided below to catalogs of several archaeological and survey expeditions to the ancient Near East which contributed thousands of images to the photographic archives of the Oriental Institute.